Columbia Mall is my mall. We go there often and we love it so I was shocked and saddened to hear of the shooting there this morning. Why am I shocked? Shootings happen everyday, but when it happens in a place you frequent you can not help but take it personally, and you can not help but acknowledge that we are all vulnerable to the actions of the crazy. We can not simply hibernate in our homes at some point we have to go out into the outside world, and the world is a scary place. We are in the midst of having a war on terrosim right here in our own backyard. When a shooter can simply enter a mall and start shooting we are all potential victims. Will this shooting follow the usual protocol? We will probably find out the shooter had an ax to grind and it was personal, or maybe he will have a history of mental illness or perhaps we will see interviews with friends and family who will tell us he was a nice guy and they are also astounded. One thing we know for sure is three people who woke up this morning are now dead. What are we going to do? We have to keep on living but we are going to have to do things differently. Today we will grieve but we have got to come up with some solutions as we fight to keep this Land of the Free.
This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.
The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?
